Helping Make our Communities Safer. Jaime is a Trial Attorney and Safety Advocate at Atlee Hall, LLP in Lancaster, PA representing seriously injured victims, wrongful death and those harmed by unsafe products and corporate neglect. Contact Jaime at 800-924-2309 or email jdjackson@atleehall.com.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

NTSB criticizes tire
recall process.

Coverage
of the NTSB’s special investigation report on tire safety continues garnering
significant media coverage. Rubber News (10/28, Moore) reports the agency
has 11 recommendations to address the tire recall process. “The current tire
registration process has proven to be ineffective in enabling tire
manufacturers to compile complete and accurate customer contact information, which
is vital to ensuring the success of a tire recall,” the NTSB said in the
conclusions in its report. “We cannot change what happened in the past, and we
cannot bring back the 539 fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and friends who
lost their lives due to tire causes in 2013,” NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart
said. “But action on today’s recommendations can help bring those numbers down
in future years,” he added. The NTSB’s recommendations to the NHTSA call for
changes to standards, recall, and safety requirements.

KXAN-TV Austin, TX (10/28, Ricke, 119K)
reports that according to the NTSB, “close to two million tires could be too
dangerous to be on the road right now, but the system for recalling those tires
is broken.” Some 500 people are killed and 19,000 injured in the US each year
in crashed involving faulty tire. T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, NTSB Vice Chairman asked
“Why can’t be service tech tell me if my tires are recalled?” to which NTSB
Highway Safety Investigator Robert Squire answered, “The main reason for that
is there’s no easy way to do it.”

Landline Magazine (10/28, Fisher, 607K)
reports the NTSB found the registration and recall system for tires
“ineffective” and the tire industry provides “insufficient guidance on tire
aging.” In its report, NTSB also “found that manufacturers’ registration
process was ineffective,” the article reports. The NTSB however found that
“more than 75 percent of all recalled vehicles have been serviced,” yet “the
rate specific to tire recalls can be as low as 20 percent,” the article adds.
The NTSB called on the NHTSA to streamline the way it lists recalled tires as
it confuses website users.